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Media progs and Soros monkeys are working overtime to discredit yesterday’s Detroit News report on alleged White House intimidation of, and pressure on, Ford Motor Company over its popular ad critical of the government auto bailout. As I pointed out yesterday, it’s just another one of those Chicago coincidences that the Attack Watch goon squad’s most recent targets just happen to be…auto bailout critics.

My column below sets the latest Ford fiasco in the proper context: the long pattern of bullying by this White House. Obama defenders in the media believe that transcribing official denials will “put the story to rest.” ATF/DOJ/WH whitewashers love these tools.

Dan Ikenson at Forbes isn’t bowed: “To the extent that the administration wants to tout the bailout as evidence of its “successful” economic stewardship, it should know that there are plenty of us willing and able to do the auditing on that claim.”

The widely-mocked AttackWatch has been eager to defend the bailout of GM and Chrysler. Moreover, touting these bailouts is a key to Obama’s effort to hold onto the Great Lakes region in 2012. Ford pointing out that it is easily outperforming GM and Chrysler is not helpful to Obama. Neither is pointing out that the bailout saved nowhere near the million jobs claimed. Indeed, it is likely that a regular bankruptcy would have yielded about the same number of continuing jobs as the taxpayer-funded bankruptcy. The only difference is that Obama intervened to bail out his union support at the UAW, rather than the companies’ creditors. With a economy mired in malaise overall, Obama does not need Ford reminding people that taxpayers were put on the hook to boost his re-election effort.

Related tidbit from John Hayward at Human Events: “Did you know Ford was the only one of the Big Three automakers that can be the target of a union strike, and the United Auto Workers are contemplating just such a strike? From a New York Times article published yesterday:”

After taking Sunday off, union negotiators began “high-level financial discussions” with Ford on Monday, according to a memo they posted online. A subsequent memo said the parties had agreed to meet for “very long negotiating sessions” this week and that bargaining would continue around the clock when a deal was near.

Ford is the only one of the three Detroit carmakers whose workers are allowed to strike in this year’s talks. Binding arbitration is the only option at G.M. and Chrysler in the event of an impasse, under the terms of their government-sponsored bankruptcies in 2009.

Spin, baby, spin. Throughout his frenetic jobs tour across the West this week, President Obama tried to seize the narrative. Republicans, he told champagne-sipping, tea party-trashing Hollywood moguls and tech titans, are intolerant bigots, know-nothings and thugs. They’ve made his hair “grayer” and left him “all dinged up.”

On Tuesday, Detroit News reporter Daniel Howes reported that White House officials leaned on Ford Motor Company to yank a popular TV and Internet ad critical of competitors who took federal bailout money. According to Howes, “Ford pulled the ad after individuals inside the White House” questioned the firm’s CEO Alan Mulally (who had earlier supported the bailout despite his company’s refusal to participate). Howes concluded: “You’re not allowed, in Obama’s America, to disparage the Auto bailout, or — indirectly — Obama. Especially during the election cycle.”

Both Ford and the White House officially deny any political pressure received or applied. But White House press flack Dan Pfeiffer refused to answer when I asked him whether anyone at the White House had ever contacted anyone at Ford to complain about the bailout ad. Ford’s social media director told me he personally “had no knowledge” of any contacts. While he disputed the gist of Howes’ report, the Ford official would not call for a correction or retraction.

He better watch out for the Obama campaign’s official snitch brigade at AttackWatch.com. After a curious hiatus, the online speech monitors are up and running again. Coincidentally enough, the site (run by several George Soros-trained operatives) targeted conservative auto bailout critics just two weeks ago.

A left-wing Washington Post writer immediately scoffed at concerns about the administration’s heavy hand because the Ford fiasco “is being denied by the parties on both sides.” Must be nice to mainline White House talking points for a living. For the rest of us, reality intrudes.

This is the administration that pummeled companies such as Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T for speaking out about the cost implications and financial burdens of Obamacare — and then cheered from the sidelines while Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman attempted to haul the firms up for a congressional witch-hunt inquisition.

The Pleasanton (CA) Weekly was bullied by the White House press shop over a benign article that irked the administration because it made Michelle Obama look snooty.

The San Francisco Chronicle was punished by the White House because a print pool reporter used a cellphone to record video of protesters at an Obama Bay Area fundraiser.

A WFAA-TV Texas reporter was dressed down by the president for having the audacity to interrupt.

The Boston Herald was spanked by the White House for running a front-page op-ed by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The White House denied any pressure in all those cases, too.

Before his campaign finance-grubbing swing ended, Obama met the pop singer Lady Gaga. She lobbied him to combat bullying across America. It was a little like Red Riding Hood lobbying the Big Bad Wolf to promote vegetarianism.